Deer Luhan,

Whoever named Miracles in December must have been psychic.  Unfortunately, they were also optimistic.  It was only one miracle.

Leigh

The mood in the dorm was sour after news of the data corruption.  I decided it was best to isolate myself in my room – D.O. was in a particularly rotten mood, though I actually felt a little bad locking him out and barricading the door – which was a little lonely until I found that Luhan kept the entire Harry Potter series (in Korean) under his bed and lost myself quite happily in The Half-Blood Prince.

I was so engrossed in reading that it was actually several hours before I realised that Sehun was trying to get into the room.  When it finally occurring to me that the banging on my door wasn’t a figment of my imagination, I reluctantly put the book down.

“Okay, Luhan, seriously.”  Sehun was actually using formal speech, which made me raise an eyebrow.  “I know you’re mad, but I need a change of clothes and D.O. looks like he’s going to explode.  Can’t you please swap with him?  It’ll be messy if he blows up in the dorm.  Everybody else has frayed tempers too.”

“Give me a minute,” I called, eyeing the chairs and dressers I’d piled up.

It took me more like ten to shift them all and open the door.  D.O. immediately pushed past me and flung himself face down on his bed.

“Finally,” exclaimed Sehun before I could comment on D.O.  “I thought I was going to get hypothermia.”  His teeth were chattering and his hair and clothes were damp.  “Tao’s barricaded himself in the bathroom so I couldn’t get a towel to dry off.”

“But Tao never showers alone,” I pointed out, shuddering as I recalled being cornered by Tao the previous evening to go shower with him.  Sehun and Kai had practically been bursting seams with laughter, and it had taken D.O. insisting that I’d already showered with him that morning and that it was Lay’s turn to shower with Tao (Lay had been totally confused) to put Tao off.

“Yeah, he’s in a bad mood like the rest of us,” Sehun explained.  “What did you do to the door?  Picking the lock didn’t work.”

I pointed wordlessly to the dresser and chairs, none of which were back in their proper places.

“Ah.”  He dropped a bag onto my bed.  “Here are more Chinese books and a heckload of flashcards.  And please, never ask me to get you sanitary products again.  It was mortifying.”

“Thanks,” I said sheepishly.  There was a rustle of movement from D.O.’s bed and we both turned to see that he’d sat up.  There was still a thunderous scowl on his face and he looked far from happy, but compared to how he’d been earlier, he was at least paying attention to the outside world.

“You got Sehun to get you sanitary products?” he demanded.  “As in… as in…?”

Sehun dipped a hand into the bag and plucked out a box of tampons.

D.O. bit his bottom lip, hard, and the angry lines on his face began to soften.

“I had to ask specifically for them, as well,” Sehun griped, “because Leigh is Ree Lee picky and the shop only had pads on the shelves.”

D.O. met my eye and a small grin began to spread across his face.  Then he cracked up and started laughing hysterically.

Sehun plopped down onto my bed with a groan.  “Today has been an awful day.”

I took the box out of his hands and put it back in the bag.  “Just be grateful you don’t have stomach cramps on top of everything.  Then you’d be frustrated and mortified as well as in physical pain.”

Sehun’s phone started ringing.  He made a muffled noise of protest as I picked it out of his pocket.

“It’s Luhan,” I informed him.

“Don’t answer.  I think I might kill him if you do.  He’s responsible for all this.”

I answered anyway and put the phone on speaker.

“Yo, yo, yo!”  Luhan sounded happy.  “S’up, Sehun?”

“He’s in a foul mood and doesn’t want to talk,” said D.O.

“You were too a few moments ago,” I pointed out.  D.O. shrugged.

“Hey, D.O.!  Wait a second.  Does D.O. know?”

“That Leigh’s a girl?” D.O. guessed.  “Have done for a while.  You’re really something else, Luhan.”

“It won’t be for long,” Luhan replied in a placating voice.

“Really?” I asked in sarcastic English, causing D.O. to give a little hiccup of laughter.  Fortunately, Luhan wasn’t in on the joke.

“Yes.”  Luhan actually sounded indignant that I didn’t trust him.  “Anyway, is Sehun there?  I wanted to ask him about something.”

“The phone’s on speaker.  Ask away, but he might be a bit too pissed to reply.”

It didn’t deter Luhan in the slightest.

“Sehun,” he began, “there are a couple of entertaining articles about you on the web.”

Sehun groaned something like “oh God, not already”.

“Apparently girls are going crazy because you’ve been buying feminine sanitary products.”

Trying to repress a grin, I glanced over at D.O. and saw that he was enjoying this just as much as I was.  Sehun gave a yell of frustration and hit the mattress with his head.

“I actually can’t tell whether they’re more pissed that HunHan isn’t real or that you appear to have a girlfriend you dote on.”

“It’s neither,” Sehun replied tersely.

“Ouch, you wound me.”  Luhan didn’t sound that put out.  “But anyway, I have some good news for you guys.  Wanna hear it?”

“Why wouldn’t we?” I demanded.

There was a pause as Luhan gathered to collect himself.

“Well, the first piece of good news is that I ought to be back on the sixteenth.  The clear up’s currently going much smoother than expected.”

I felt a surge of excitement.  Just over a week and I can go home!

“That’s the day before we start promoting,” D.O. observed.

“What, they pushed the release date back that far?”  Luhan sounded surprised.  “It was originally supposed to be out on the second.  Everything was prepared for it.”

“Our managers felt we needed a break after the world tour, so it was delayed,” D.O. answered.

“What’s the rest of the good news?” I cut in.

There was a pause.

“How do you pay for your mobile?” Luhan asked me cautiously.

“Monthly.  Why?”

“So me making calls from it and constantly using it while abroad is expensive, right?”

“It’s really expensive,” I complained.  “Wait – Luhan – this doesn’t sound like good news—”

“I left my Korean credit card behind,” he interrupted me.  “It should be somewhere under my bed with the Harry Potter books inside one of the dustcovers.  I’ve got about seven million won on there, and it’s not too hard for me to add a little extra into it every few days, so if I give you the code—”

“I’m not going to be here much longer than a week.”  I was going to have to get planning shopping-wise if I was going to spend upwards of four thousand pounds in the next week.  It would take skill.

“Think of it as payment.  For the phone bills, if nothing else.”

Sehun rolled over.  “Wow, Luhan.  You’re normally a total scrooge.”

“Hey, her mum sounded like she might actually kill me through telepathy if I didn’t at least offer something.”

The boys both snorted with laughter.

“Oh, man, you actually answered one of her calls?”  I almost pitied Luhan.  Almost.

Luhan apparently didn’t want to dwell on the memories.  “How are things back in Korea, anyway?”

“First things first,” I said, “can I have the unlock configuration for your phone?  And then we have news for you, too.”

“What, Sehun doesn’t know the combination?  I could’ve sworn he did.”

“You changed it after I personalised all your ringtones as farm animals, hyung, remember?”

D.O. snickered.  He clearly remembered, even if Luhan didn’t.

“I kind of need the code,” I wheedled.  “Everybody expects to contact me – I mean you – via your phone and they expect you – I mean me – to reply, but I can’t do anything except take calls.  Suho thinks I hate him because I never reply to his texts.”

Laughing, Luhan gave me the combination.

“Pass on any important messages, please,” he added as I finally managed to unlock the phone – to be faced with the one thousand and seventy-six unread messages and one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-one missed calls.  At least, I took it from the icons that that was what they were, because all the writing was in Chinese.

“Jeez,” I said, somewhere between awe and alarm as I scrolled through the list.  “I didn’t know phones kept logs up to this point.  This is going to take me a couple of days to get through.”

“That bad?” Luhan and Sehun asked together.  I held the phone up briefly so that Sehun and D.O. could see.  D.O. raised an eyebrow and whistled.

“Who’s DoNotReply?” I asked Luhan.  “You have four hundred and thirty-three text messages from this person, and seven hundred and fifty-eight missed calls.”